The Leadership Generation Gap

By Jazmine Boatman, Ph.D.

The generational debate is an age-old one (pun intended). When it comes to work and even non-work related topics, older generations want the younger ones to earn their dues (and experiences) just like they did, and the younger generations urgently want to experience. So instead of focusing on why those differences exist , let’s focus instead on how we can close the gap to our advantage. As we all get inevitably older, the question of legacy and preparing for the future becomes more significant. Who’s going to keep the ship afloat?

DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast, surveying tens of thousands of leaders, found that Generation Y leaders crave more coaching – something that older generations are the perfect candidates to deliver. Their historical and experienced perspective is exactly what younger generations want to learn from. So the issue, as it turns out, isn’t that Gen Yers are too self-absorbed and trophy-hungry to pay attention, or that older generations don’t want to coach them. What the research uncovers is that the real issue, as a general rule of thumb, is that the majority of leaders (3 out of 5) can’t coach effectively. What this means in a nutshell is that younger generations aren’t learning and older generations aren’t passing their wisdom down. Perhaps if we spent more time closing this gap and getting leaders to be better coaches, we can put our differences aside and get back to work.

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